


Issue 2: Baby Love

by Vinnocent



Series: Junior League vol. 1: Titans West [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Blue Beetle (Comics), DC Animated Universe, DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types, Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Anxiety Disorder, Asexual Character, Awkward Dates, Body Horror, Embarrassment, First Dates, Gen, Gore, Green Lantern Milagro, Human Trafficking, Lawyers, Next-Gen, Nightmares, Original Character Death(s), Pets, Police, Self-Esteem Issues, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2018-11-11 08:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11144982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: Supergirl battles anxiety over a potential romance while the team acquires an unexpected guest.





	1. Chapter 1

“Um, hello?” says a quiet, shy voice, and Theodore Dyer looks up from where he is yet again logging returned books to see a somewhat gawky yet athletic figure in a simple blue dress, a pair of narrow black eyeglasses framing unearthly blue eyes. She smiles at him in that uncertain way of someone defaulting to a pleasant smile when they're not sure what else to do. He thinks maybe she might be about his age? She’s… really pretty. Really very pretty.

“I, uh…” Teddy mumbles awkwardly. 

She keeps smiling, but now there's an edge of hopeful expectation. “Can, um… Could I check out?” she asks. 

Teddy could have politely pointed out the self-checkout kiosk, but… “Do you have any fees to pay?” he asks. 

She shakes her head, which shakes her mostly-straight, shoulder-length, blue-black hair into her eyes. “No,” she insists. She quickly pushes her fringe back behind her ears. “No, I haven't been here that long, and I read pretty fast, not that I'm bragging or anything, it's fine to read slower, I just don't, so no late books.” She bites her lip as though she literally has to force herself to stop talking. It's adorable. 

“Uh, yeah, then, I can check you out. Um, check out your books,” Teddy quickly amends. He goes to the computer she's standing in front of and logs in. “So, you’re new to town?” he asks. He grabs the first of the two books on her stack and… awe, he'd wanted to read that. Oh, well, it can wait.

“Yeah!” she chirps happily. “Just moved out a few weeks ago! I moved in with Lian?”

Teddy takes the second book and scans it as well. Really? This one, too? Ugh, he needs to get better about actually putting things on his hold list. “Can I have your library card?” he asks, slightly distracted now.

She hands it over, and he scans it, and then her words sink in and he does a double take. “Oh! You're…? You mean that you're Johanna?”

“Yeah!” she chirps again. “She's mentioned me?”

“Um, a couple times,” he says. He diverts his attention momentarily to complete the transaction and hesitates a moment before printing out her receipt. He doesn't quite look at her as he pushes across the two books, receipt, and library card. 

Johanna hesitates at his odd behavior but finally takes her books. “Uh… alright. Um, thank you?” she says, turning away. 

“Doyouwanttogooutsometime?” he blurts out suddenly, blushing brightly. 

“Um…”

“For like… coffee?” he struggles, barely able to look her in her very confused stare. “Or… maybe pizza? Or…”

“Okay,” she says.

If possible, his blush would brighten even more. “R-really? Um, like Saturday? There's a cafe two corners down,” he says. He points. “That way. They have… good lunch.”

She's blushing, too. “Um, okay…” she says. She turns away shyly. “Um, okay, bye.”

“Right. Bye!” Teddy calls after her. “Saturday!” he reminds her. 

“Saturday!” she calls back. Then, she flees as fast as she can without straight up running. 

* * *

Almost the second that Jo steps out onto the dormitory floor of Titans Edge, Mariand'r bursts out of the suite at the end of the hall that she shares with her sister, Lian Harper. She dives forward and hooks her arms around Jo’s neck, demanding, “What happened?!”

“Uh… what?” Jo asks. 

“You're happy and embarrassed and scared!” Mari says. “I want to know why!”

“W-what?” Jo struggles, trying to keep her balance. 

Lian emerges from their room to explain, “Mary’s an empath. Get used to her constantly announcing your feelings.”

“Was someone mean?” Mari demands, clinging tightly to Jo’s shoulders. 

“If someone was mean, why would she have happiness mixed in?” Lian counters.

“Maybe someone else stood up for her after the first person was mean, but the meanness still bothers her even though it was really nice that someone stood up for her?”

“N-no!” says Jo, blushing once more. “It wasn't- A boy asked me out. At the library.”

It's very lucky for everyone in the building that Mari doesn't have vocal superpowers, because she literally _screams_ in delight. “Oh my god, what?! Who?!” she demands. 

“I have no idea!” Jo wails. She lets herself fall back against the hallway wall in despair. “I've never met him before. I don't even know his name! I said yes because I couldn't think of what else to say and I didn't want to be mean!”

Lian, the _witch_ , is snickering at her teammate. Helpfully, she suggests, “We don't have a ton of teenage regulars this time of year. Maybe you'll never see him again, and you can get away with ghosting him?”

“I doubt it,” Jo grumbles. “He works there.”

That sends Lian's eyebrows up above her actually prescription lenses. “We don't have any employees your age,” she says. “Did a grown man creep on you? Was it Jared? He seems the type.”

“What? No!” Jo insists. “I-I don't think so?”

“Wait, aren't there volunteers from the high school?” says Mari. 

Lian thinks about that. “Well, yeah, there's Teddy,” she admits.

“Yeah!” says Mari. “I bet it was him!”

“Teddy asking someone out, though?” Lian says with obvious disbelief. She returns her attention to Jo and asks, “Was he about yay high and kinda dorky?”

“Um, I guess?” says Jo. 

“Wears polo shirts for some reason and doesn't cut his hair often enough?” Mari adds. 

“Oh, yes, that's him,” Jo tells her. 

“You should date him,” Lian decides. 

“W-what?” Jo demands at the same time Mari asks, “Ooo, you think?!”

Lian shrugs. “I mean, only if you want to, obviously,” she says. “But he's cute and sweet, and you're cute and sweet… Why not give it a shot?”

“Yeah, and what happens if we hit it off and eventually he cops a feel?” Jo demands. 

Lian just tilts her head and arches an eyebrow. “Well, one, if you really think he doesn't know, you could just tell him. Two, if he's an ass about it, this is clear evidence that he's not good enough for you. And three, isn't that going to happen eventually with someone anyway?” she asks. Then she hesitates, a new thought occurring to her, and adds, “Uh… Unless you were planning on waiting until…?”

Jo does a fantastic impression of a tomato and cannot look her friend in the face as she answers, “No, that's not… Kryptonite surgeries are for life-saving procedures only. It's too risky otherwise.”

“Okay, well, then-” But before Lian can share any more thoughts on the matter, they're interrupted by Damian Wayne's voice over the intercom. 

“Girls, suit up and come to Mission Room ASAP,” he orders. 

Mari rolls her eyes and heads back to her room with Lian. “I thought we were done recording testimonies!” she whines. Jo meanwhile hurries to put her books away before suiting up. 

* * *

Colin Wilkes sits in front of Detective Yu of the SFPD Vigilante Consultation Division and Deputy District Attorney Navarro in Yu’s office with Colin’s tablet full of evidence files laid on the desk between them. Technically, Damian should be doing this, but Damian isn’t good with people. Also Damian Wayne (or Milagro Reyes, for that matter) regularly walking in and out of SFPD headquarters would probably gain media attention, while no one looks twice at Colin.

“So basically, when cross-referencing all the information from the last two busts along with street information, what little our source knows about the operation, and observable movement, we’ve come to the conclusion that these four warehouses are likely to also contain illegal merchandise,” Colin explains. “The calculated likelihood of containing smuggled drugs is 97%,” he says pointing to one warehouse on the map currently displayed on the tablet, “64%” he points to another, and “and 47%,” he points to a third. “All that, obviously, I could have told you in an email. What we suspected might require special discussion is this fourth warehouse.” He points to it on the map. “Based on word on the street, we believe that this one is actually an outsourcing job - moving someone else’s merchandise, and we have reason to believe that merchandise isn’t drugs.”

Yu groans, leans back in his chair to look at the ceiling, and says “Fifty bucks says it’s either something horrible or something completely insane.”

“We believe it’s bodies,” Colin tells him. “We’re not sure if living or dead. We’re not sure if human, metahuman, homo magi, off-worlder, otherwise, or all of the above. But, given the sort of language these rumors use, we definitely suspect bodies.”

Navarro picks up the tablet, slides away the map, and starts looking through the other evidence in the folder. “Yu? Any of this familiar to you?” she asks while reading.

Yu scratches his throat and sits upright again to wake up the laptop on his desk. “Yeah, I think,” he says. “Let me check. That forty percent one, Narcotics has been working on it for a while but hasn’t been able to gather enough evidence for a warrant. If there’s anything new in your files, it might help push us forward.” He brings up something on his own screen, quickly reads over it, and nods. “Yeah, so they don’t know about the other two. Even if they still can’t move on that one, the data on the others moves them months ahead in intelligence.” He glances up to Navarro. “Nothing on human trafficking though. Or, uh, y’know… others.”

“Mm,” Navarro hums. She hands the tablet back to Colin. “Hand over your narcotics data ASAP. As for the other one… You didn’t hear this from me－ In fact, let’s make it clear that you never discussed body trafficking with any active law enforcement agent or state prosecutor.”

Colin rolls his eyes. She always says that when she wants vigilantes to do the cops’ jobs without a warrant. Like the Titans don’t know how to handle this by now. “Right.”

“But the thing you haven’t heard is that it would take months for the police to gather enough of their own evidence to get a warrant and move on this,” Navarro tells him. “By then, even if this warehouse is still in use, I can guarantee you that whatever’s currently in it will have moved on to its buyer and the trail from there will be cold dead.” She’s blatantly trying to manipulate his emotions on the subject, and Colin can see right through it. Doesn’t mean she’s lying. Doesn’t mean that it isn’t working.

Navarro continues, “Should the Titans happen to, on their own, bust a group guilty of trafficking biological materials and/or sentient persons of whatever origin and then turn over the evidence and criminals gathered during the operation to SFPD, I should hope evidence documentation as thorough as their most recent operation would be turned over with it. I should also hope that they would have Supergirl on the operation whether necessary or not, as the super family is incredibly popular with jurors and most judges.

“ _However_ , if the Titans happen to illegally enter a legal business venture, I should hope they do not drag the good name of the SFPD down with them in their mistake. And should they uncover some villainous machination of the type they don’t want to hand over to SFPD, I should hope that no documented evidence would enter civilian or law enforcement hands which might pin any unsavory action on Supergirl, Green Lantern, Robin, or Nightstar.”

Colin is surprised by this statement. He and Navarro had already had several long discussions about the legal issues surrounding Abuse since beginning his involvement with the Titans, but… “You don’t care if Red Wolf is connected to something… not great for publicity?”

“Ideally, no member of the Titans would ever be connected to such activity,” Navarro says. She shrugs, “But honestly, it wouldn’t have much impact on future cases if she sullied her name. Right now, she has a clean slate, but no one expects her to keep it. She’s scary and intense. She could be as virtuous as a nun, and the public will still always be suspicious of her.”

Colin scowls. “Robin is intense and scary.”

“Yes, but he’s male and allowed to be.” She purposefully ignores the look Yu gives her at that.

Colin groans, “Wow.”

Navarro shrugs again. “I didn’t make this world, Wilkes; I just work in it. And knowing how it works is what makes me so damn good at my job. So I advise listening to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, I can do this,” Jo whispers to herself as she walks toward the library. “It’s not a ‘no.’ It’s just an ‘I would rather date someone I actually know.’ I mean, he could know me, I guess. Which would… involve dating. Ugh. He’s going to hate me. I’m such a butt.” On entering the library, she starts to head to the front desk.

But Teddy isn’t there.

Right, he’s a volunteer, which means that he just does whatever random jobs the library needs doing that don’t require a library sciences degree. Just because Lian knew he’d be at the library most weekday afternoons didn’t mean he’d be easy to find. Jo sighs to herself and heads into the nearest division － popular fiction － to start her search. She had to do this, though. It was unfair to go on a date with a guy you didn’t want to be on a date with. Better to tell him now than wait until Saturday and stand him up or tell him after they were already awkwardly sat together.

Just the idea of it made her shiver with anxiety.

Jo makes her way as slowly through the stacks as possible, because she really doesn’t want to do this thing that she needs to do. Maybe she’ll just… miss him. And then it won’t be her fault, right? And maybe a mission will come up on Saturday, and that also won’t be her fault.

And then she nearly walks straight into Teddy’s back.

She immediately hides behind the nearest stack as Teddy turns around to the presence sensed behind him. “Hello?” he asks, looking around uncertainly. “Was someone there?”

Jo waits in her hiding spot, hand over her mouth like she's hiding from a monster in a horror movie, until he finally shrugs it off and goes back to reshelving books. Once he’s let his guard down again, she uses her super speed to dart another could of stacks away just for good measure.

This is ridiculous. How is she supposed to talk to him if she’s hiding from him? How’s she even supposed to go out with him if she can’t talk to him? This whole thing is a disaster. Why on earth had she said yes??

Her phone rings. Embarrassed at having not turned it to silent, she quickly answers without checking the number, “Hello?”

“Hey, Jo, where are you?” Conner’s familiar voice asks her. “I went to see how you were doing, but Nightstar says you’re at the library. Which is, apparently, extremely funny? Anyway, I don’t see you here in the nerd section.”

Jo has no idea what “the nerd section” is. Possibly reference? “Oh, um, popular fiction. First floor,” she tells him.

“Cool, be right there.” And he is right there only a split second after hanging up on her, grinning down at her broadly. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Oh, um…” Jo glances back in the direction she last saw Teddy to make sure they haven’t attracted attention. “Not much.”

Conner raises an eyebrow at her. “Uh, what are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you hiding from someone?”

Jo practically jumps, feeling like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Um－ I－ Hey, you shouldn’t be using your powers in public,” she chides him despite the fact that she had just used the same powers. He doesn’t know that.

Conner snorts. “Nice save,” he teases her. “Besides, you either ran or flew recently, so you’re full of crap.”

“ _What_?” she demands as quietly as possible. “How could you know that?”

He points to her head. “Wind resistance makes your hair start curling up again,” he reminds her.

“Oh no…” Eyes wide, she starts pulling at the strands she can see self-consciously.

With a pitying smile, he pulls her hands away. “It’s fine,” he assures her. “It’s only a little bit. No one’s gonna look and say, ‘Hey, that girl has the same haircut as Supergirl.’ Which, honestly, I don’t think is going to happen anyway. Clark’s gotten this far on glasses alone, and I have honestly never done anything to hide my identity besides change shirts.”

“And move a lot,” Jo says. She casts another glance in what she thinks might be Theo’s direction. “Look, can we, um, go somewhere else?”

Conner frowns, no longer amused. “Jo, are you okay?” he asks. “Is something going on?”

“Please, let’s just go,” she says, taking his hand to lead him out the library. Conner continues frowning but doesn’t resist as she leads him out of the Popular Fiction section… and right past Teddy.

Teddy looks surprised to see her, then turns to start to say something, looks confused, and then apparently decides not to bother her. Probably because of the suspicious look Conner is giving him. Jo walks faster.

By pure coincidence of picking a random direction once out of the library and then stopping at the first place that looks good for talking in, Jo realizes that she has pulled Conner into the exact café that Teddy had asked her to. Great. Now she can visualize her impending doom with even more clarity!

She groans and buries her head in her arms on the table of her booth. Conner orders their sodas, then crosses his arms, leans back, and says, “Okay, talk.” in that serious big brother voice he uses when she’s being evasive or in trouble.

Jo knows she’s not getting out of this, so she admits, “The boy we passed that gave us the weird look? His name is Teddy. He’s a volunteer. And he asked me out yesterday.”

Conner scowls. “And he didn’t take rejection well?” he guesses.

Jo knocks her forehead gently against the table surface. “I said yes.”

“Oh no, how terrible,” Conner says as blandly as possible.

“It is!” she insists, finally raising up to look at him. “Conner, I only said yes because I’m incapable of saying no! I don’t even know the guy!”

Conner raises his eyebrow again. “You don’t have to know someone already to date them, Jo.”

Jo gives him her well-practiced ‘Don’t tell me about your weekends’ look.

He snorts at that. “I’m serious!” he insists. “Sure, a lot of teenagers tend to date within their own social group, but not always. And most people in general go out with someone they don’t know very well. That’s the point of going out, Jo. To learn more about them, test the chemistry, see how much you really like them.”

Jo starts to object, can’t think of a good objection, and looks away, chewing at her lip.

“Do you want me to handle it for you?” he asks. “I can do the Scary Brother thing at him.”

“ _No_ ,” she says, shooting him a dark look.

“You could get your friends to－”

“Absolutely not!” she all but screeches.

Conner frowns, considers, and then asks, “Do you want to date him?”

“I－” Jo stutters, and then again she looks away. Finally, she mumbles, “I ’unno.”

Conner rubs his face wearily. Oh, how he does not miss self-created teenage drama. “Okay, what are the cons?” he asks.

Jo frowns at him, but starts listing on her fingers, “I don’t know him well. I can get to know him, but he can’t get to know me at all, which makes me a total liar. He might not can tell I’m trans; I know I don’t pass super well, but I pass if you’re not looking for it. And, I know Lian said that would make him a butt who doesn’t deserve me, but what if I like him, and then he finds out and he hates me after I already like him? And what about the powers? If he ever finds out, what will he think? I’m not even _human_.”

Conner’s frown deepens. “You’re half-human,” he tells her. “And half-kryptonian. Both.”

Jo sighs wearily. Looks down at her hands. “Some days, I don’t feel like either,” she admits.

Hello, familiar old anxieties. Did not miss you. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I get that.” He reaches across the table to hold her hand. They’ve talked about this before many, many times. But knowing and feeling will always different things. Knowing Kara and Clark accept you as their own doesn’t change the fact that they have to slow down to fly with you, that sometimes you have to call them in to finish your fights, that absolutely everything you know about your heritage is second- and third-hand, and that despite all this, you are always going to be god-like among your own peers.

So, instead of addressing that issue, he says, “So what are the pros? Why are you tempted to go ahead with it?”

Jo blushes and pulls her hand back away from him. She looks extremely guilty, which is both adorable and dumb. “Okay, well, Lian thinks I should. Try, I mean,” she says. “She says he’s sweet, and I mean… he is kind of cute. In a totally dorky way. But…” She blushes harder. Smiles just a little. “Yeah… cute. And I just… I don’t know… I like that someone likes me? Part of me wants that to mean something? Ugh, that’s so selfish.”

Conner doesn’t mean to laugh at her, but it’s hard not to. “Jo, it’s not selfish to like being wanted. It’s hu－” He cuts himself off and tries again with “It’s natural. Everyone wants to belong somewhere. Most people want to belong with some _one_. It’s okay to like attention, to like being liked. You’re not manipulating him or using him just to give a guy a chance and see if there’s chemistry. It’s one date, not a wedding.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she admits quietly. “I just… I don’t know. I feel like I’m doing this wrong.”

Conner rolls his eyes. “Let me tell you from experience, Jo, anyone who says there’s a right way to do this is a fuckin’ liar.”

“Conner!” she chides. But she’s laughing and smiling at him, even if she does still look embarrassed and worried, which means things aren’t that bad afterall.

The waitress comes back with their colas. “Have you decided what you want yet?” she asks, and Jo is about to admit to having not looked at the menu yet, when Conner lifts his so that Jo can’t see, and says, “Yeah, she wants one of these. And I’ll have a slice of apple pie.”

“Okey doke! I’ll be back with your order in only a few minutes,” the waitress says, picking up the menus again and then disappearing.

Jo gives her brother a suspicious look. “What did you order for me?” she demands.

“I have no idea what I’ve done to earn such distrust,” he tells her with a grin.

She glares at him. “Conner…”

“Back on topic,” he says quickly. “I think, if you’re so unsure about this, especially on the basis of not knowing this guy at all, what you should do is go talk to him about it.”

“That’s what I was trying to do when you interrupted!” Jo protests.

Conner snorts. “No, what you were doing was hiding,” he reminds her.

She blushes again. “Well… it’s what I was trying to try to do,” she mumbles, and he laughs. She shoots him another glare and says, “Look, I’m not like you and Dad and Kara, okay? I’m not brave. Which is stupid because nothing has ever hurt me in a way that matters, but like… literally everything gives me anxiety, and I just want to stay home and not have to face it.”

Conner sighs heavily. “Yeah, but you didn't want to keep trying all those horse-size anti-anxiety meds that barely helped anyway,” he reminds her. “So the only thing to do about it is work on it yourself, like the psych told you.”

“I know,” Jo says morosely.

“If you think you need to go back to－”

“No, no, I’m managing it,” Jo tells him, meeting his concerned gaze for only a split second before adding, “Mostly.”

“If you’re sure…”

They’re interrupted when the waitress returns with Conner’s pie and Jo’s… ginormous bowl of ice cream, cake, syrup, whip cream, and cherries. “What the _heck_ , Conner?!” she demands, wide-eyed at the monstrosity.

He downright _cackles_ at her. “That’s what you get for being sad,” he tells her. “Now eat until you’re happy again.”

“You’re so dumb!” she says. But she’s already smiling.

They end up hanging out around the city for hours, catching up on each other’s lives as well as just having fun teasing each other. When he drops her back off at Titans Edge, she’s surprised when he strips off his old, worn leather jacket, and hands it to her.

“Um, what?” says Jo.

Conner shrugs but continues holding it out to her. “When I was new to the scene － you know, after the whole clone thing was settled － I was really insecure and lonely. Then, I saw this in a shop and decided to get it because it made me feel badass,” he admits. “It didn’t actually make me badass, but it made it easier to pretend, you know? Anyway, I thought… Well, it helped me, maybe it will help you. I mean, it’s not really the same one. They keep getting, like, blown up and stuff, but－”

Jo takes the jacket and hugs him. “Thanks,” she tells him, pressing her face into his shoulder.

He grins and kisses her lightly on top of her head. “No problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We actually accidentally named three characters Theodore and two Landons. Teddy was the first and his name was simply auto-generated since he's an original character, while the other two are children of canonical characters named after canonical characters, but by the time we realized our mistake it felt weird to call him anything else, so his nickname became Teddy instead of Theo. Kind of fitting, 'cuz he's cuddly. (The Landon thing is sillier, because we wanted an "old man name" and forgot we'd literally already named an old man that.) We decided repeatedly using the same name for several different characters just makes it feel more authentically DC anyway. :P
> 
> At least we didn't name him John.


	3. Chapter 3

Lian is still working on her “punishment for risky behavior” when Robin comes up to the garage. “Is it done yet?” he asks.

“Just because I know how to tune and repair my bike doesn’t mean I’m a mechanic,” Lian says, wrist deep in Drone Alpha with various tools spread around her on the floor. She yelps and jerks back when something sparks at her. “Or a miracle worker…” she grumbles. She picks up the blueprints lying next to her and frowns at them. 

“It’s fine, gives me an excuse to kick Reyes out,” Robin tells her. Lian looks up at him questioningly, and he explains, “Haven’t had time to order another drone yet. They work best anchored to only one person, mediocre when anchored to two, and terrible when anchored to three or more. So, for the next mission, I’m kicking her off and putting you back on perimeter with a stationary cam.”

Lian raises an eyebrow at him. “The body-smuggling warehouse?” she asks. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave Abuse behind?”

“Tt,” says Robin, rolling his eyes.

“Or put Milagro on perimeter instead of me, since she’s more popular with juries and I’ve still got a limp?” Lian adds.

“No, because the limp is a bonus; it means you’ll stay where I put you,” he tells her.

“I chase my mother one time, and nobody can let it go!”

“Because we want to embarrass you into never doing it again,” Robin tells her with a sharp look.

Lian gives it right back. “Ever work on you?” she asks.

“Tt,” is all Robin says, but Lian can easily see the way his non-existent hackles rise, his body language screaming hostility and defensiveness.

“Uh, sorry,” she mumbles, returning her attention to the drone. “That was… rude.”

“Whatever,” he says. But a glance up through her bangs says that he’s relaxed slightly.

“So what even is your problem with Milagro?” Lian asks. “I ask because like, Green Lanterns are hella useful. But you’ll kick her off the team at any given opportunity as long as it doesn’t risk the mission to do so.”

“Tt,” he says yet again.

Lian frowns up at him. “No, serious question, Robin. As a subordinate, don’t I deserve to know what the problem is with one of my leaders?”

“It’s not like that,” he grumbles.

“So what’s it like?”

Robin opens his mouth, then closes it again. Thinks.

Luckily, he’s saved from answering this question by the appearance of none other than Milagro Reyes. “Tell me we’re ready to go on Drone Alpha,” she says as she enters the garage from the elevator.

“‘Fraid not,” says Lian.

Milagro scowls, turns to Damian. “You sure you can do this with a team of four instead of six?” she asks, already come to the same conclusion that there's no way a drone can monitor three people at once. “I could move Kid Flash here tonight with one of East’s drones, or move in Batgirl or Josh if you wait another day or so.”

Damian shakes his head. “Five, not four. Putting her on stationary perimeter, and you’re sitting out.”

“Can she do that from that location?”

“She’s a good enough shot to make a higher building work for her.”

Milagro shrugs. “Alright, but signal me if I’m needed.”

“Yeah sure.”

Milagro gives him a long, uncertain look, then turns to Lian and says, “Tell Abuse to signal me if I’m needed.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Lian snarks from her seat on the floor.

“I let my mentee chase her mother one time, and nobody can let it go,” Robin grumbles, and when Lian snickers, she sees him send a small, knowing smirk her way.

Milagro, however, is not amused. “No, because it was _fucking stupid_ ,” she snaps. “So if you get in over your head, _call for backup_. Am I clear?”

Instead of answering, Robin just glares at her.

Milagro throws up her hands, makes an angry noise, and storms out. Lian and Robin watch her go.

“Have you considered fucking it out?” Lian suggests.

Robin immediately turns beet red. “Twenty laps!” he orders, pointing to the wall of the garage.

“What?! I’ve got a lame leg!”

“Should have thought about that before getting mouthy!”

“It’s not my fault you enjoy getting _mouthy_ with Reyes!” she says, already sealing up the drone’s casing to abandon the project for the day.

“Forty laps!”

“ _Worth it_!” Lian sings, and then takes off running.

“Sixty laps!”

* * *

For the warehouse raid, Robin teams with Supergirl again and Abuse takes Nightstar. There are two exits that aren’t covered by anything more than Red Wolf’s scope, so there are a lot of people who go free simply because they ran faster than their comrades. At the end of the night, they successfully detain a mere eighteen men and women. It’s not an ideal situation, but hopefully it will lead to investigation of a larger ring.

The team - sans Red Wolf, who has yet to abandon her perch “just in case” - waits on standby as the police process the arrests and evidence. On orders from Robin, Supergirl watches carefully with glowing red eyes.

“Well?” asks Robin, quietly so as not to attract police attention.

Supergirl shakes her head, still squinting at each crate as it passes by. “I’m not seeing anything that looks like bodies, sir,” she tells him.

“If we busted a legal operation, we’re going to be in so much trouble,” Nightstar worries, wringing her hands.

“No one protects legal goods with automatic rifles,” Robin tells her. “Even if we’re wrong about the merchandise, this is still a criminal enterprise.”

“Do you hear that?” Supergirl asks, suddenly tilting her head.

“Yes, we definitely hear this random noise with the super hearing all your teammates have,” Robin says, rolling his eyes. “What did you hear?”

Supergirl is already slowly moving away from them, looking around with a confused frown. “It’s… sort of like a cat? No… I don’t… Something is… crying?”

Robin notes the way Abuse tenses up. Neither of them point out that cats and infants sound very similar. Instead, Robin says, “Where?”

Supergirl’s scowl deepens as her head swings back and forth, peering through the warehouse desperately. Her eyes glow even brighter. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything living besides police and criminals. I－ Huh.”

“What?” Abuse presses.

“I just realized I can’t see through the floor.”

Damian shrugs. “So? It’s a warehouse,” he says. “It’s several feet of concrete, and below that is _the earth_. What’s to see?”

“Concrete and the earth,” says Supergirl, now frowning at the floor below her.

“It’s not concrete,” says Abuse. At Robin’s questioning look, Abuse demonstrates by giving a small hop. The floor bends slightly under his weight. “I think it could be laminate that looks like concrete.”

Robin scowls at the floor. “Pull it up,” he growls.

When they fail to find a seam to start with, Supergirl makes one. With her fist. As it turns out, the floor is laminate on top of metal on top of wood. Supergirl confirms that the metal is an alloy containing lead, though, “That might not be on purpose? There are a disturbing amount of things that contain lead.” Nonetheless, Supergirl, Nightstar, and Abuse  begin systematically dismantling the floor.

“Hey!” calls one of the police officers. “What the hell are you doing?!”

Robin holds up a hand, signaling the officer to stay back and quiet. “Just－” He’s interrupted from his explanation when he, too, suddenly hears the sound. It could be a cat. It probably isn’t. “Supergirl! Get down there!”

“On it!”

Supergirl drops through the ever-widening hole to peer down into the dark, hidden basement. Drone Beta follows her. Robin pulls out his phone － a tablet doesn’t exactly fit in a utility belt － and pulls up Drone Beta’s feed. The Drone’s searchlight, however, is only trained on Supergirl. So it’s Supergirl that spots… whatever it is. “Guys! Get down here!”

Nightstar is immediately down there with her, though her vision isn’t nearly as good as a Kryptonian’s. Robin pulls a pair of nightvision goggles from his belt, dons them, and then orders, “Abuse, stay up here!” before hopping down the hole.

At first, he doesn’t see it. And then he does.

Rows and rows of pods and cages. This is where the bodies were hidden. And bodies they are. The forms in the pods had clearly already been vivisected. Though a few, he realizes on closer inspection, do appear to still be at least partially functioning. Something that might have been an exposed heart in some sort of alien creature beats slowly. A headless corpse’s lungs shudder, struggling for breath. Most of the bodies are alien, which makes Robin suspect that the human-looking ones are probably not as human as they seem.

The whimpering cry calls out again. Supergirl immediately moves to one of the cages, though Nightstar hasn’t moved at all since she came down here. Robin can’t worry about that now; he follows Supergirl. There, in one of the cages, are two humanoids, breathing shallowly, not responding to the intrusion. Clutched in their arms is a baby.

Supergirl pulls off the bars of the cage, reaches in, and carefully lifts the infant from its mother’s arms.

Its eyes glow vivid blue, and it wails pathetically.

She turns to Robin, helpless. “What… what do we do?” she asks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the three month delay. I've been working on original fiction as well as business and immigration stuff. Updates are obviously not gonna be super timely, but I'm still feelin' this fic, so I'm gonna keep at it. Occasionally. Subscribe to the series to know when it updates!

In the Quarantine Recovery Room of Titans Edge, Robin taps his foot impatiently as Milagro yet again uses her ring to scan over the three humanoid aliens from the cage Supergirl found. Of the three dozen bodies recovered, only seven were alive in any meaningful sense and, and four of those were healthy enough to be sent on to Watchtower for debriefing (using Koriand'r and J'onn J'onzz as translators) before being turned over the Green Lantern Corps to figure out. But while the two adult humanoids appear to be in critical condition from neglect, their infant (well, presumably theirs) is likely only in as good of condition as it was because its mother had continued to produce food for it in spite of her own condition. It is, in fact, currently curled up in its unconscious probably-mother’s arms, licking secretions from her arm that Milagro _thinks_ might be a breast milk equivalent. These secretions, however, have almost run dry, and the alien secreting them is in the most dire condition of the three.

Milagro jots something down on her tablet, adjusts something on the nutritional drips that the two have been hooked up to until conscious enough to eat, and then scans them again.

“How many scans do you need?” Robin demands. “I’ve seen Lanterns glance over someone once and come to immediate conclusion!”

“Because those were probably registered species!” Milagro barks back. She takes a deep breath, runs a hand through her bangs, and stares worriedly at the alien forms. She scans them again.

Robin watches her carefully. Her whole body language is antsy and high-strung. She’s… probably scanning them more than she actually needs to. “You mean they’re something not known to Oa?” he asks, frowning.

“The galaxy is really big, Damian,” she grumbles. “Things get overlooked. Like, for example, humanity until a few decades ago, which, in terms of Green Lantern operations, is basically like a few seconds ago.” She sighs heavily and looks at the aliens with a sort of pouting frown. “And we know almost nothing about the rest of the cluster, the supercluster, the universe, other dimensions… 99.9% of existence is unknown to Green Lanterns, and they could have come from anywhere.”

He raises an eyebrow at that. “Overlooked part of this galaxy, I understand, but how likely is it that they could have come from a different galaxy entirely?”

Milagro looks at him skeptically. “ _Tamaran_ is in a neighboring galaxy not monitored by Green Lanterns… Though apparently it did have a Lantern once upon a time.” She waves this off. “It’s a long, complicated story that isn’t actually relevant right now.”

Robin’s scowl deepens. “So we might never be able to send them back?”

“Well, there’s still a chance that they’ll make a sudden and miraculous recovery and be able to answer all our questions.”

“Not a good chance, though.”

Milagro sighs again. “No, not a good one,” she admits. She scans them over again. “More bad news, I have no idea how long I can sustain this baby on IV fluid if the milk-making parent dies.”

“The ring can’t sense that?” asks Robin.

Milagro shakes her head. “I can read their health, but with them being unregistered, I have no detailed information,” she tells them. “I’m basically making up this IV formula based on what they _seem_ to be low on, and then scanning again to see if the adjustments made things better or worse. Babies, though, they need a _lot_ of calories and immune boosters and digestive enzymes and stuff, and I don’t _have_ that! I can’t figure out alien milk formula on my own! What if I poison it? What if－”

“Do you think Mariand’r could help?” Robin interrupts.

Milagro gives him a sidelong look. “I doubt it can talk yet, Damian.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “With her empath powers, I mean,” he says. “Is it possible that she could sense… I don’t know, the sort of food it’s craving? Or at least if it’s responding well to a small food sample or treatment.”

Milagro runs her hand through her bangs again as she considers this. “It’s a long shot,” she says, “but it’s not impossible.”

Robin nods stiffly and turns to leave the room. “I’ll go get her then.”

“Robin?” she calls, and he stops and turns back to her. She’s not looking at him, but she’s tense. “I… I’m sorry for biting your head off earlier. Lian told me that what you said was intended to be a joke for her, and obviously you didn’t mean it that way, and that you’d apologized for misleading her and… I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat like that, especially in front of your mentee.”

Robin just shrugs. “It was a safe assumption, even if a wrong one,” he concedes, and when she shoots him a dark look, he shrugs again and tells her, “Look, you were right before. － Cherish that, because I’ll never say it again. － I’ve been distancing myself from them instead of ‘taking them under my wing’ like I’m supposed to. It’s how I usually handle… stress, and I didn’t think about the impact on the girls.”

“Yeah, but you were getting better,” says Milagro. “Ever since I got back this time, you’ve been even more aggro than usual. Are you… worried? About Roy and Jason?”

Robin snorts at the idea. “No.”

“Do you not like it here anymore?”

“Tt.”

“... Do you hate me so much that my staying here is making things worse?”

Robin gives her a look that clearly communicates that he thinks she’s an idiot, and then heads back toward the door. “I’m going to go fetch Mariand’r.”

Milagro watches him leave, then frowns down at the aliens again, crossing her arms over her stomach for comfort. Maybe Colin was right. Maybe she couldn’t date him _and_ let him keep being friends with Damian. Maybe a choice was going arise, and she’d lose both of her closest friends.

* * *

The alien baby is not looking at the carrot that Mari is holding out. It is looking around in awe at the kitchen. Mari frowns. “Well, it’s probably safe to say that it doesn’t consider root vegetables food,” she guesses.

“Yeah, or it’s not hungry,” says Lian.

Jo is hovering next to the countertop the infant is sat atop, ready to grab it if it topples over again. It doesn’t seem to like being held by strangers for very long, and seems to prefer being no lower than three feet off the ground, so the only solution so far has been to hover beside it and grab it when necessary. “Well, if it hasn’t been moved to solids yet, it may not recognize food that’s okay to eat?” she guesses. “I mean, does a baby human know what a carrot is?”

“Baby humans - and baby half-Tamaraneans and half-Kryptonians, for that matter - think literally everything is food,” Lian informs her. “It’s sort of trial and error. Everything goes in the mouth, and if it can be swallowed, then it must have been food. Actually, if I recall correctly, there’s a preference for white, yellow, soft, and bland food, because those are least likely to be toxic. But, um, that’s probably due to similarity to milk, and well…” She gestures to the baby. “This one was licking oil of its mom’s arm.”

Jo snaps her fingers as an idea comes to her, which does, briefly, gain the baby’s attention. “Oil! Mari, look for something high fat to try!”

Mari scowls. “What, you want me to feed it a stick of butter?” she asks.

Jo shrugs. “It can’t hurt to try.”

Mari makes a disgusted face, but puts the carrot back in the fridge and grabs a stick of butter. She waves it in front of the baby’s face, and it does seem interested, but… “Okay, huh. We’re getting closer, I think, but I think they don’t trust it? Ugh… I’m trying to sense the feelings of a baby; this is so hard!”

Lian takes the butter from Mari, unwraps it, puts it on a small plate, and pops it in the microwave for forty seconds. When it comes back out partially melted, she holds it in front of the baby. Its eyes immediately widen, and it shoves its hand into the butter. It squeals in delight.

Lian looks uncertainly to Mari. “Uh, my thought process was that warm things smell better, but… Is this food or a toy?”

“Man, I don’t know!” Mari says, dropping her head against the countertop.

Lian starts to take the butter away again, but then the baby starts crying, so she puts it back in front of it, where it can continue smashing at it like a very melty play dough. “I think, we might be really terrible at this,” she says.

Soon, the girls are distracted from their quest by the sound of the door on the nearest stairwell. “We're in the kitchen!” Lian calls out in case their supervisor, leader, or trainer were looking for them. 

Damian arrives at the kitchen looking exhausted with Colin at his heels looking only slightly better. Damian has barely opened his mouth when Mari moans, “Oh no…”

Jo glances at her friend uncertainly, then to Damian and Colin. “What's going on?” she asks. 

While Colin rubs at his neck and searches for the right words, Damian says simply, “The presumed mother has died. The other is very close. We're running out of time to save them and the baby, so Milagro has gone to Oa to try to get help and check the wider database to see if anyone has a clue to the species, and…” Damian pauses, leans to the left for a better look, and demands, “What the hell have you three been doing?”

The girls return their attention to the baby to find it has stuck its whole butter-covered fist in its mouth and is currently sucking away happily. “IT LIKES BUTTER!” Mari cheers, throwing up her arms in victory.

Lian surreptitiously snatches the plate of smashed butter and puts it back in the fridge. “And now we wait a few hours for a reaction,” she says.

“I'm sorry, did you feed the baby straight _butter_?” asks Colin. 

Mari shrugs. “It didn't like carrots.”

“I don't think that explains what you think it explains.”

“So what do you do if it _does_ have a reaction?” asks Damian. 

Lian scowls and admits, “Well, I was counting on Milagro being here to scan it with her ring, so I guess we're left with ‘give it lots of water and find Jesus.’”

“That's not funny,” Colin chides. 

“No, it is not,” Lian agrees. Everyone watches worriedly as the baby continues to lick its fist clean. 

“Look, that's not all,” Damian tells them. “I had my suspicions about the suspension fluid, due to the fact that some of the clearly dead corpses were still animate, but I haven't finished testing it. That said － Shadow, get off the counter!”

The girls turn yet again to see that one of the elusive cats of Titans Edge has come up onto the counter to sniff at the baby. Mari picks the cat up and puts it on Jo’s shoulder, who immediately stiffens and shoots Mari a dirty look. Lian takes it away, takes it into the hallway, puts it in the stairwell, and closes the door behind it to prevent it from returning. When she returns to curious and confused glances, she explains, “Cats carry parasites which are thought but not proven to be dangerous to human babies. Don't really want to risk it with the alien baby.”

Colin raises an eyebrow. “But there's three cats and a dog living here,” he says. 

“What dog?” asks Jo, who has only seen two of the cats since moving into Titans Edge. 

“The dog is fine － he's too lazy to be a problem, but we should really guard the baby from the cats,” Lian insists. 

“Great, more things to be concerned about,” Damian grumbles. “Look, what I was saying is that you girls need to know that there's the slim chance we're dealing with the League of Assassins here. Personally, I think there's only an indirect connection, but we should all be on our toes just in case. I'm going to chase this thread while the four of you monitor the aliens, but Colin? Lian? You're who I'll be calling on if I need back up.”

Before anyone can say anything about this, the baby starts crying again. “Oh, no, it's not a reaction is it?” Colin worries. 

Both Jo and Mari are already wrinkling their noses and stepping away. “No, I think it pooped,” Jo says. 

“NOT IT!” Lian immediately shouts, hand shooting up. Colin and Mari immediately follow with their own raised hands and cries of “Not it!” Jo, who has never played this game, shoots a confused glance at Damian, but the traitor just smirks and says, “Not it.”

Lian elbows Jo playfully. “That puts you on diaper duty, Jo,” she explains. 

“Awe, what?”


	5. Chapter 5

In the dream, Damian is drowning in fire. He can feel it in his cells, reshaping him. Remaking him. Like a furnace. The lake is the anvil. And she stands on the shore, watching, and her eyes are the hammer.

Once awake, Damian showers for nearly an hour before he feels clean. Gargoyle, the ten-year-old mostly-black Boxer that rarely moves from the end of Damian's bed (a mattress on the floor, to make the journey easier on the dog’s arthritis) much less Damian's suite at the opposite end of the dormitory floor from where the girls have made their rooms. Even Colin is several doors down, and Milagro - who moves each time she comes back - has only tried to room next to him once. Damian does not do well with other people encroaching on his privacy.

He dresses the way he always dresses, as casual as he can manage while also being prepared for battle. This usually means loose, flexible jeans and a hoodie over the lightest version of his Robin armor. When he was with the assassins, the armor only came off to bathe, and then went right back on. Light armor was even slept in. Despite fifteen years having passed since then, he still can't get rid of the feeling that to go totally without is to offer his throat to his enemies.

And he has a lot of enemies.

The one and only thing that's changed in recent months is that now he cares what his hair does. Previously, he'd just buzz it short again once it was in his eyes, and that was all the thought he gave to it. Now, he checks the mirror carefully and changes the way it's parted in an attempt to keep the gray roots hidden.

“Come on,” he tells Gargoyle as he heads to the door. The old dog pouts but eventually raises up and slowly trots after him to go for the morning walk. It's become increasingly frequent that the old dog won't be able to make it all the way outside before relieving itself, but luckily today is not one of those days. Damian knows he'll have to figure out a solution soon, but he's been too stressed to think about it.

Outside, Gargoyle does his business almost immediately, and then the two sit under the sun for a while, waiting for Gargoyle to recover enough to be ready for the long walk back inside to Damian's room. Damian lays back on the grass and thinks about Lazarus.

According to Colin, Lazarus of Bethany was a beloved follower of Jesus Christ, back when Jesus was mortal. Jesus was sent for when Lazarus fell ill, but Jesus did not leave for another two days and arrived in Bethany four days after Lazarus’s death. Lazarus’s sisters thought it a shame that Jesus had not come in time to heal Lazarus, but Jesus again preached that any who believed in him would find life eternal. He then had the gravestone rolled away - at this time, the dead were often interred in caves sealed with boulders - and he called out to Lazarus to awaken and come out. Lazarus then did, in fact, come out, still dressed in grave clothes. The grave clothes were removed, and Lazarus was revealed healthy. The whole thing was an on-earth demonstration of the power the Abrahamic God had to do the same in heaven as well as a foreshadowing of the events following Jesus's eventual death.

This was not the story that Damian’s mother had told him. In her version, El’azar al-Ghul was found by God to be the best of men, and so was rewarded when his grave caved in to reveal the first Lazarus Pit, and thus it was promised by God that so long as the head of the al-Ghul family was the greatest specimen of humanity, they would continue to have access to eternal life. Throughout their history, they had failed in this. El’azar was lastingly dead because he had stopped being good enough. Ra’s was lastingly dead because he had stopped being good enough. But the new head always rose again before the legacy was lost permanently.

Gargoyle licks Damian's face, signaling that he's ready to go back inside.

After walking Gargoyle back to his rooms, Damian washes his hands and face to get the animal germs off - usually he doesn't care, but these are special circumstances - and heads down to Quarantine Recovery. There he finds Colin holding his cellphone between his ear and shoulder - no wonder the guy gets "twinges" in his neck - while assembling a hermetic pod. The alien lies unmoving on its bed, entirely covered by a white sheet, its monitors and nutritional drip turned off and disconnected. The other bed, where the "mother" had been, is now stripped bare and stinks of disinfectant.

Colin raises a hand to Damian to signal for him to wait while he says into the phone, “Sorry, Brenda, I just don't think I can come in today. Some, uh, things have come up. … Yeah, I know, and I'm sorry about that, but really, I can't come in. … Yeah, part time might be a good idea for now. … Well, Flora does a good job when she substitutes for me. … I know, I'm sorry, Brenda, but I really do have to go. … Yeah, sorry. … Take care.” He puts the phone in his jeans pocket and tells Damian, “Sorry about that.”

“The shelter must not be happy with all the time you've been taking off lately,” Damian mumbles. His eyes don't move from the white sheet.

Colin shrugs. “Well, being good at a job that I do for free gives me a lot of leeway,” he tells him. “But I might have to switch to another position with more flexible hours if this keeps up.”

“Do the girls know yet?” Damian asks.

Colin looks back over his shoulder, realizes Damian means the second dead alien, and tells him, “Oh, um, not yet. It seemed mean to wake them up just to give them bad news. Thought I'd wait until after breakfast.”

“Where's the other one?”

“In the transport room,” Colin says, turning back to his work. “In another medical pod. Milagro requested they be boomed to Oa for treatment and identification. By the time I finished with her, I no longer had to worry about how to transport this one safely.” The words are casual, but Damian recognizes the acidic tone. He doesn't point it out.

Instead he says, “I could have helped.”

“Eh, I just transformed for the heavy parts.” Colin waves a hand dismissively. “You were still working; I didn't want to interrupt. By the time he died, you were finally in bed, so…” He shakes his head. “How's the research going?”

“The suspension fluid only shares _some_ commonalities with Lazarus Pit substance,” Damian tells him. “However… you know that mission to Tibet I took while Lian and Mary were away?”

Colin stiffens. “You mean the one where you went A.W.O.L. for 52 hours?”

“Yeah.”

Colin sighs heavily. “Yes, Damian, for some reason that one sticks out in my memory.”

Damian ignores the comment and continues, “Well, it's a complete match for one of the samples I brought back from there.”

Colin stops what he's doing and turns completely to Damian this time, standing to face him seriously. “Okay,” he says, “What does that mean?”

Damian only shrugs. “It means there's definitely some kind of connection to the assassins, but… they have no motivation to tamper with the Lazarus formula, and they have no interest in aliens. _But_ my mother has often gotten herself involved in unrelated trades when the league was experiencing financial deficit. It's _possible_ that she sold a heavily adulterated formula for profit; the substance would be useful to someone who wanted to keep dead flesh fresh without using bulky and fallible cryogenic chambers.”

“Ugh, gross,” Colin complains. “So do you think we should escalate this to Justice League?”

Damian shrugs again. “I'm not sure yet. It would be best to learn who we're actually up against first. Let me know the moment Mil- Reyes learns anything.”

Colin smirks knowingly.

“Oh, shut up,” Damian growls. “Where's the infant?”

“Co-sleeping with Mari and Lian,” says Colin. “Since they share a room, that means they can split the task. It's doing a lot better actually. We suspect it might have a naturally ketogenic diet, as it will eat lots of fats and oils and a smaller amount of pureed fatty meat, but the only vegetable we could get it to eat was an avocado. For humans, it's a potentially dangerous diet used for kids with otherwise untreatable epilepsy because the way the human body utilizes chemical energy in that diet has an effect on the brain that's helpful to them. It seems, though, that for the baby’s species, this may actually be their base diet. The good news is that since _some_ humans eat this way, we have earthly resources for it. So, we put some keto formula on order, and until it arrives, Jo’s working on trying to pack as many vitamins and minerals as possible into an oil blend.”

“Huh,” says Damian. “Well, at least we helped _someone_.”

Colin sighs, rubs his neck. “Yeah…”

Damian passes by Colin to sit on the floor with the pod parts and assembly tools. “Well, let's try to get this done before it starts smelling.”

* * *

“What's the boom tube for?” Mari asks out of nowhere, and Damian has to catch the surprised Colin before he accidentally falls into the portal. Luckily, his floundering pushed the second hermetic pod all the way through.

Damian reaches over to the controls and closes the tube. “The others up yet?” he asks.

“Lian is making coffee, so she'll be awake in about half an hour,” Mari reports. “Baby is still asleep, and Jo's still asleep, so we gave Jo the baby.”

“Go wake her up,” Damian orders. “We'll talk to you over breakfast.”

Mari looks between the two of them and frowns, obviously sensing the mood. Plus, Colin looks extremely guilty and evasive because he has no poker face. “Right,” she says, deflating. She turns and makes her way back to the dormitories.

Once she's out of sight, Colin sinks against the wall. “It's times like this I'm glad you're the leader,” he mumbles.

“Why?” asks Damian.

Colin raises an eyebrow, realizes he's serious, and then confesses, “Dude, no way could I deliver this amount of bad news in a short space. I'd probably start lying or something.”

“You can't lie around Mariand’r,” Damian points out.

“Yeah, exactly,” says Colin, “but I bet you I would try.” He gives Damian a weak smile for the weak joke.

Damian doesn't return it. “We should go upstairs, now.”

“Yeah,” Colin says, peeling himself off the wall.

They take the stairs unhurriedly to give the girls time to get up and assemble. When they get to the kitchen, Lian basically has her face buried in a soup mug full of pale coffee, Mari is pouting with her chin resting on the countertop, and Jo is precariously balanced on a barstool half asleep with the sleeping baby in her lap, gnawing gently at her arm. Lian looks up at them grumpily and asks, “So what's the update boss?”

“The other one died overnight,” he says bluntly. “Both bodies have been sent on to Oa for identification. Additionally, my suspicions about the loose connection to the League of Assassins has been confirmed, but I still need to conduct more research before I can say anything for certain about the nature of that connection or what it means for us and future missions.”

The girls make various grunts of acknowledgement, but don't say anything in response, all of them too morose and tired.

Colin and Damian exchange glances, and then Colin asks, “Uh, do you three have your own updates?”

Jo makes a vague gesture to the overhead cabinets. “I've got an oil blend made that it likes and is super nutritious and can be painted on the skin. There's gelatin in it too, for good measure. Just be sure to stir it up before feeding it to the baby, because it tends to settle out pretty quickly.”

“And _we_ were kept up all night by the occasional diaper change and more frequent baby nightmares,” Lian grumbles. “Which could only be quieted by walking it around. Plus side: Best lesson on the importance of contraception I've ever had.”

Mari raises an eyebrow at that. “But you like girls,” she says.

“Mari, I am _sitting right here_ as evidence that doesn't necessarily guarantee the type of equipment!” Jo snaps.

Mari blushes vivid pink. “Oh, um, right. Oops?”

Colin is blushing and staring at the ceiling. Damian, instead, glowers at all three of them and demands, “Why are you three so gross?”

Lian only snorts, Jo blushes, and Mari just looks at him with confusion. Lian snarks, “You have an even more liberal definition of ‘gross’ than Dad does.”

“Grayson is a ritualistic germophobe,” Damian points out. “I'm telling you that your _brain_ needs to be cleansed.”

Lian pretends to consider this, then votes “Nah.”

Before the conversation can further devolve into petty insults for the sake of not discussing the actual situation, Colin (alerted by a notification on his phone) tells them, “Boom tube connection activated again. From Oa. Milagro must be back already.”

“Thank god,” Damian grouses. “Tell her to come up here to the kitchen.”

Colin is already texting her, but raises an eyebrow at that. “You're approving an _informal_ debriefing?” he asks.

Damian gestures pointedly to the girls. “Do they look like they're moving any time soon?” he points out. Then, to Lian, he asks, “Harper, did you leave any coffee for anyone else?”

“As tempted as I was to drink straight from the carafe, yes there should be enough for at least one of you, depending on how you take it.”

“I'll get a pop,” Colin volunteers as though he actually had a choice.

Damian makes his way past Lian, grabs a reasonably sized mug from the cabinet, and pours out what is a much darker liquid than usual. “Uh, Lian, how much grounds did you put in this?”

“All of them.”

She's obviously teasing, but, nonetheless… “Joa, monitor her heart rate for the next few hours please.”

He hears nothing but snickering behind him and turns to see that Joa has passed out leaning backwards against the counter top. “Her room is close to ours, and her hearing is good,” Mari explains. “I think the crying kept her up, too.”

Damian simply grumbles an acknowledgement and gets down a second mug, dividing the coffee sludge between the two. Colin, who has already fetched a Coke, raises an eyebrow. Damian ignores him, adds water to his own mug to get it to resemble something a human would drink, and adds the over-sweetened liquid coffee creamer that Lian drinks by the gallon to the other. When Milagro walks in, he immediately hands it to her. She blinks in surprise. “Oh, um, thanks?”

“It's Harper's fault,” he explains. Meanwhile, Mari pokes Joa awake again.

“... Okay?” Milagro shakes her head and then returns her attention to the group at large. “Okay, so here's the deal. Once we had the bodies, we were finally able to pull the data on their species － from the ancient archives. Back when we had a Tamaranean Lantern.”

“... Oh no,” Mari whines, sinking down lower on her stool.

Joa gives her a confused look. “That's bad?”

“The species is Lorite,” says Milagro. “They're from the same galactic arm as the first planet Tamaran, though not really what I'd call neighbors.”

“Which means they're Citadel-ruled, doesn't it?” says Lian.

Milagro nods sadly. “Yeah,” she says.

“Well, uh, isn't the Citadel less bad than it was?” Colin asks hopefully.

“Yeah,” admits Milagro, “but that's like saying the temperature of hell has dropped a couple degrees. They're no longer expanding, there's currently no active wars, but they still use and abuse those they rule. It's a fair bet those two got all the way out here via intergalactic slave trade.”

She sighs, sips at her coffee, and then continues, “So here's the deal. We were able to contact the extended family, and they thank us for returning the bodies, but they want us to report to the Citadel that all three died. They would like us to keep the baby here on a safe planet, where it can grow up without ever personally knowing the troubles of the homeworld.

“In a few years, that should actually be doable. Once it learns to control the eye thing, it will be able to pass for human. Biodata indicates that earth won't supercharge it as much as it has Tamaraneans, Kryptonians, and others. Mostly it will have some increased durability and strength and also be able to produce a controllable glow. Their natural diet is basically ‘space walrus and herbs’.”

“Do we at least have a name? A gender?” asks Colin. “We can't keep calling it ‘it’.”

“Uh, that's complicated,” says Milagro. “Its name is a growling noise I can't mimic; I have it recorded though, if you want to try. And also their species has one biological sex and their culture has five genders, so while I can tell you that it's a klale, I doubt that clarifies anything.”

“It's a vegetable?” asks Damian, getting giggles from the rest of the room. He scowls because he wasn't trying to be funny.

“Okay, I support giving it refuge, but we can't keep it here much longer,” says Colin. He gestures to the girls. “Just one night raising it themselves has already turned the team into zombies.”

Milagro glances at the pathetic state of the girls sympathetically. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “Just… let me catch up on sleep, and then I'll go report to the League.” She glances down at her mug. “Accepting this was probably a bad idea,” she admits. She takes another swig anyway.

Mari elbows Jo in the side. “Shouldn't you get some rest, too?” she asks. “You've got that big date in a few hours.”

Joa suddenly sits bolt upright. “ _Wait, today is SATURDAY?!_ ”


	6. Chapter 6

Theodore Dyer isn't sure what to expect. He's already been sitting at the cafe for a couple hours - pretending to work on his laptop - because, he realizes, he forgot to give Johanna a more specific time than “lunch,” which could be any time between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, depending on what kind of person you are. There's also the fact that, in his over eagerness, he totally bulldozed her, and given the way she blatantly didn't want to talk to him when she and her brother had run into him the other day, he wouldn't be surprised if she bailed entirely. Maybe he could transfer to another library and still get his credits.

Whatever it was that he was expecting, it wasn't for a racoon-eyed Johanna to drop herself unceremoniously into the chair opposite him, wearing no makeup, her hair a mess of combed-out curls, in a t-shirt and ripped jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket that's too big for her. She looks like a completely different person from the girl in the library, but still someone that makes his heart climb up into his throat and makes it difficult to speak. Luckily, she speaks first, mumbling, “Hey, uh, sorry I'm late. We had an unexpected visit a few days ago from a friend-of-a-friend who happened to have with them a baby that will _not_ stop crying.”

“Oh, uh… that sounds… awful,” Teddy barely chokes out. “I, uh…” He tears his eyes away from her to look at his hands. It helps, a little. “You weren't late though. I forgot to specify a time and… Look, if you don't want to do this, that's fine. I feel like maybe I pressured you, and that was dumb, and I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to call it off. It's fine, really.”

When she doesn't say anything, he looks up to see that she, too, is frowning down at her hands. Eventually, she says, “I… Yes, you did. Pressure me. A little. Pretty obviously by accident, but I'm easy to fluster. I just… I don't know if I want to? I'm… I'm pretty flattered, really, but I just… It would feel less weird if I knew _why_?”

Teddy blinks at her uncertainly. “Why what?”

She blushes a little. It's really cute. “Why you wanted to ask me out?” she mumbles, head tucked and disheveled curls falling over her eyes.

Teddy is pretty sure he's blushing too. “I, uh… It… It's kind of lame,” he admits.

She shrugs, looking up at him a bit through her fallen fringe. “Well, I'm lame, so that works out,” she jokes.

“Are you kidding me?” Teddy demands. “You're so cool! You're sixteen and already graduated and living independently with yet another genius who graduated at sixteen and then got her library sciences degree in three years. Like, yeah, I'm sure being richer than God helped Lian, but you're not rich - I think? - so that makes you even _more_ impressive, and I…”

Teddy looks away, runs a hand through his hair nervously, and tries not to notice the way she's watching him with rapt attention. “Okay, so I have really bad memory and a pretty short attention span, which means that if a book I want is checked out, I always forget to put it on hold for at least a couple weeks. Which was fine, mostly. There's not lot of people who checkout social studies textbooks that _aren't_ required for class at odd times of year, so the system worked fine. But then suddenly, there's this guy, Jonathan Lane-Kent who _always_ has whatever book I want. His name just keeps popping up over and over and it's driving me crazy because I should have put the books on hold but the only reminder I have is _him_ checking it out first. And he never actually has them long, which kind of kicks the ego, you know? Because it takes me _forever_ to get through them. But then I check you out, and you have books I wanted to read, and you give me your card and even though you're Johanna, Lian's friend, the computer calls you Jonathan, and I realize it must be your old name and I must not have been remembering wrong about Lois Lane having a son, and all along this dude I've been low-key resenting has been a really pretty girl, and like, it was totally dumb, but how could I _not_ go for it, you know?”

She's staring at him.

He blushes and looks away again. “Sorry, I told you it was weird.”

“Technically, you said ‘lame’, and also that's the absolute sweetest thing I've ever heard.”

Teddy glances back up to see that she's blushing brightly and also smiling. It's a beautiful smile, and it's for him, and he feels like melting. “R-really?”

“Yeah.” Jo looks away, still blushing. “So, um, you already know of my mom?”

“Oh, yeah!” he blurts before realizing it's weird. “I mean, like, I'm interested in, y’know, social justice-type things, and her corruption investigations are really amazing. So I've read all of her books? They're, uh, really easy to digest because even though they're non-fiction, they read like thrillers, and everything is fascinating.”

Jo is grinning at him. “That's awesome!” she says. “I'll tell her you said so.”

“Oh god, please don't,” Teddy says, burying his face in his hands.

Jo laughs. “Okay, but she'd like to know, so like, can I tell her it was said but not by who?”

“Yeah, okay,” he squeaks.

“Lian was right,” says Jo, and when Teddy looks up at her in question, she tells him, “You _are_ cute and sweet.”

Teddy feels like maybe his face is on fire.

Jo giggles delightedly and leans forward on her elbows, chin propped on her hands in interest, and says, “Well, since you know about my family, do you want to tell me about yours?”

Teddy blinks at her for a second, wondering why she'd be interested in that. And then he realizes, the gentle smile, the way she's leaning in toward him, the look in her eyes… She's totally interested! In _him_!

And then he can't _stop_ talking.

* * *

“So what's new?” Lois Lane asks her daughter over Skype. “How are you fitting in with the new team?”

“Great!” Jo chirps. “I mean, it was hard at first. I accidentally offended Mari… a lot. But Lian gave me some advice, and then we were friends. And we've had a few missions, and um, one of them was gross, but I did a good job and I'm proud of myself!”

Lois smiles back fondly. “I'm proud of you, too, honey. Now, who are Mary and Leann?”

From somewhere in the background, Clark tells her. “Mariand’r is Nightstar and Lian Harper is Red Wolf. They're Roy, Dick, and Kori's kids.”

“Oh! The ones that used to come over when Jo was little?” she's asking him, face turned away from the camera.

“Oh my god, Dad, you knew about Mari?!” Jo shrieks. “Why didn't you tell me?!”

“What?” he calls back, voice still distant. “I guess I assumed you'd recognize her? She and Kori don't do much to hide themselves.”

“No! She looks entirely different now!” Jo proclaims. “I thought she was older than me! She's so… big!”

“Big?” Lois repeats, raising an eyebrow.

Jo sighs heavily and admits, “Well, she's much wider than before, but Mom, she’s fourteen and has boobs as big as her head.”

“Oh poor thing!” Lois says, hand to her mouth. “Thank god for superstrength, or she'd have the worst back problems ever.” She hesitates, considering. “Unless they get proportionally heavier? Honey, how does that work again?”

“I am absolutely not participating in this discussion,” Clark groans.

Lois sticks her tongue out at him. Turning back to Jo, she says, “Well, I'm glad to hear that she's put on weight. She used to be like a stick, didn't she?”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Jo confirms.

Clark finally joins them, leaning over the back of Lois’s chair, and she promptly angles the laptop camera up to show both of them. “They were feeding her Kori's diet,” he tells them. “Once it occurred to them that hey maybe you should try human food on a half-human, she immediately started putting on weight.”

“Like in a good way or bad way?” Lois asks, eternally curious about alien differences.

“Good,” Clark assures her. “Tamaraneans have poor digestion so they rely primarily on solar energy instead of chemical energy. Humans are the opposite. As it turns out, she’s extremely efficient at converting both, so most of her chemical energy gets stored. But S.T.A.R. thinks once she really figures out how to use it, she could end up more powerful than her mother.”

Jo's surprised by that. Mari is definitely powerful, but so far she'd seemed incapable of staying aloft for too long, was slower than Jo, and had punches more equivalent to Abuse than to her mother or even Jo. Could all that really be just because she was still a novice? “Okay, well, um, besides my friends, there's something else I wanted to talk to you about?”

“About your date?” asks Clark. “How did that go?”

Lois reaches up and smacks his arm lightly. “We weren't going to tell her we knew!”

“But I want to know!” Clark pouts.

Johanna groans and sinks down in her chair, covering her face. “Not that, and I am going to _kill_ Conner.”

“Okay, okay, I'll drop it,” says Clark when his wife smacks him again. “So what's up, Jo?”

“Um, I don't know if Ms. Reyes has talked to the League about it yet,” Jo mumbles, her eyes drifting away from the screen as her heel begins to bounce anxiously. “But um, several nights ago, we had a mission that was… gross. For some reason, someone was smuggling mostly dead bodies? Like what do you even do with that?”

Clark groans with regret and bows his head while Lois blanches. “Uh, we'll talk about that in person sometime, sweetie,” Lois assures her. “That's… That's not what you wanted to talk about, is it?”

Jo realizes she's bouncing her foot maybe a little too much when she smells the rubber start to melt, and she takes a breath to try to force herself to stop. “No, it's not,” she tells them. “It's that, well there was a survivor. Well, there were three, but two died. But that's not the point.”

“What _is_ the point, Johanna?” her mother asks, looking very confused.

“Oh, um, the survivor is a baby,” says Jo. “An alien baby. A Lorite? I mean, it mostly looks human, but still. Alien.” Jo starts picking at the hem of her shirt. “Thing is Ms. Reyes went to go track down the extended family, and um, they're slaves. They don't want us to send the baby back, because then it will be a slave, too. So… we haven't figured out what to do with it? Ms. Reyes is going to talk to the League about it soon, but…”

Lois is barely hiding her amusement. “Wow, I did not think I would have to give you advice on raising babies this soon,” she teases.

Jo blushes bright red. “Mom, no!” she objects loudly. “Look I just… I've been thinking a lot about family. About… us. And I remembered you telling me that I couldn't expect a biological sibling because even I had been a surprise, and that you decided not to adopt because you weren't sure a human child would really _get_ how important it is to keep things secret and how unfair it would be to them to have such a vast difference in experience between it and its siblings. And, well, a Lorite wouldn't have that problem.”

Clark blinks in surprise, wide eyed. “I'm sorry, do you… Are you angling for us to _adopt_ this baby?”

“I mean you don't have to!” Jo says, quickly throwing her hands up in innocence. “Of course you know you don't have to; I didn't need to say that. And I mean I don't expect an answer right away or anything, except maybe a hard ‘no’, which I get, you weren't expecting this, but like… I don't know… You're great parents and you have experience raising weird kids and keeping secrets and you had once wanted a bigger family and I know you'd give it stability and love and resources it never would have had if we hadn't found it, and I just think it would be as lucky to have you as you would be to have it.”

She tucks a loose bit of hair behind her ear and stares at her keyboard.

“I… that's very flattering, honey,” says Lois, still looking a bit shocked. “But… I think your father and I will need to discuss this.”

Jo nods quickly. “Yeah, I… that's fine.”

“You know that no matter what, we love you and support you, right?” Clark presses, as he does every time Jo avoids looking at them. Jo nods rapidly in answer, still looking at her keyboard.

“Okay, sweetie,” Lois says. “I guess we should say goodnight for now. Just… concentrate on your Titans thing, okay? I love you, and we're proud of you.”

“I'm proud of you, too,” Jo says, then immediately squeaks and buries her face in her hands. “Ugh! That makes no sense! Why do I－ OH BUT WAIT!” she cries, suddenly remembering the other thing when wants to tell her mom. “I am! I mean, um, I met someone at the library the other day who was familiar with your books and went on about how great you are at making non-fiction readable! So, uh, I thought I'd tell you that!”

Lois raises an eyebrow at that and smirks. “Someone at the library, huh? Was it Teddy?”

“BYE MOM!” Jo squeals, slamming her laptop closed to the sound of Lois laughing her ass off.

The next day, Milagro comes back from her meeting with the Justice League calling Jo a genius and promising to buy her gallon of her favorite flavor of ice cream because apparently the second she'd finished her debriefing, Superman informed her that he and his wife had already discussed it and would be more than happy to take the child.

Jobs pretty sure getting her sleep schedule back is better than ice cream. But she doesn't tell Milagro that.


End file.
